Upper Susan Creek Falls – The Return

I took a return trip to Upper Susan Creek Falls with dad, Duane Cannon, during a higher water period and it resulted in tougher hiking and better results.

This was sitting at the very beginning of the trek. It’s a coral fungus and named for, umm, obvious reasons. (Note - 6.5 years later, this is still the nicest looking coral fungus I have seen.)

Here’s a little millipede.

Nice view of the “trail” once you leave the logging road. Our best guess was that the oldest trees growing in the road are about 30 years old. The area surrounding the creek is heavily deciduous, so leaves covered everything, leaving great uncertainty as to where to step.

“Fall is in the air” is the saying. No, fall is on the ground.

You may have noticed the right angles on the rock sitting in the right of the creek in the above picture. It is columnar basalt and the angles are probably naturally that squared. We did notice a man-made creek tumble and water shelter, however. There are fish in this creek, and with a 200-foot tall waterfall above and a 35-foot tall waterfall below, they spend their entire lives within the drops.

My estimate is the water is up about 50% more than it was in September. I really wish the sun wasn’t out or was at least filtered through a sturdy cloud. On most of these, I had to drop the exposure on the camera quite a ways to keep the sun from ruining everything.

This is a pretty dramatic view. Last time, I was able to climb up into the bowl. It was a bit tricky because of the slick rocks and little to climb on. This time was much more difficult and that’s why this is as far as I got.

This is quite the little spot and one of the best waterfalls in the North Umpqua drainage.

We followed the logging road out but it got a bit jumbled and we were a ways past the car, so we headed up. The road to the top of the falls was just too muddy to pass through right now. The main reason I want to go up there is this curious object shown on aerial images, Google Earth on top, Flash Earth on the bottom:

It’s about 17 feet across and I have no idea what it could be. It looks suspiciously like a Yin-yang symbol in the center of it. There’s also a very round brown object nearby but I think that is just a rock.